Case Studies

Staff will share

by Mark Rowe

According to a survey by an identity and access management (IAM) product company, one in four UK employees will share sensitive information outside the company. It claims there’s growing security negligence in the workplace despite employees’ concern over risk to personal data

According to SailPoint’s annual Market Pulse Survey, a disconnect exists between staff concern over the security of their personal information, and their attitudes toward data security practices in the workplace. The survey found that 87 per cent of employees would react negatively if their personal information was breached by a company. Yet these same employees are exposing their employers to the same data breaches through negligence and poor password hygiene. In a challenge for IT and security people, 26 per cent of employees admitted to uploading sensitive information to cloud apps with the specific intent to share that data outside the company.

Findings

Poor password hygiene continues to plague enterprises. The majority of respondents (63 per cent) admitted to using a single password among applications, and 28 per cent share passwords with their co-workers

Employees don’t assume responsibility for protecting the integrity of corporate security processes. Nearly one in five employees would sell their passwords to an outsider. Of those who would sell their passwords, 56 per cent would do so for less than £700.

Organisations are struggling to keep up. One in three employees admitted to purchasing a SaaS application without IT’s knowledge. Some 39 per cent of respondents reported having access to a variety of corporate accounts after leaving their last job. For the results visit https://www.sailpoint.com/MarketPulseSurvey.

Kevin Cunningham, president and founder of SailPoint, said: “This year’s Market Pulse Survey shines a light on the significant disconnect between how employees view their personal information and that of their employer, which could also include personal information of customers. Today’s identity governance solutions can alleviate the challenge of remembering several passwords and automate IT controls and security policies, but it’s imperative that employees understand the implications of how they adhere to those policies. It only takes one entry point out of hundreds of millions in a single enterprise for a hacker to gain access and cause a lot of damage.”

About the survey

Designed to measure employee attitudes toward protecting corporate digital assets, research firm Vanson Bourne interviewed 1000 office workers at organisations (with at least 1,000 employees) across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Australia.

About the firm

SailPoint offers access management delivered on-premises or from the cloud (IAM-as-a-service). Visit www.sailpoint.com.

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